"Then I'll tell you:
'In the oven this is best, 'tis said,
That it never itself doth eat the bread.'"
And then, pointing to the wagons before the house, Amrei asked:
"What's full of holes, and yet holds? "--and without waiting for a
reply, she gave the answer: "A chain!"
"Now you must let me ask you these riddles," said Damie.
And Amrei replied: "Yes, you may ask them. But do you see those sheep
coming yonder? Now I know another riddle."
"No!" cried Damie, "no! Two are enough for me--I can't remember three!"
"Yes, you must hear this one too, or else I'll take the others back!"
And Damie kept repeating to himself, anxiously: "A chain," "Eat it
itself," while Amrei asked:
"On which side have sheep the most wool?"--"Ba! ba! on the outside!" she
sang merrily.
Damie now ran off to ask his playmates these riddles; he kept his fists
tightly clenched, as if he were holding the riddles fast and was
determined not to let them go. But when he got to his playmates, he
remembered only the one about the chain; and Farmer Rodel's eldest son,
whom he hadn't asked at all and who was much too old for that sort of
thing, guessed the answer at once, and Damie ran back to his sister
crying.
Little Amrei's cleverness at riddles soon began to be talked about in
the village, and even rich, serious farmers, who seldom wasted many
words on anybody, and least of all on a poor child, now and then
condescended to ask little Amrei one.
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